LG hopes phones with ‘different form factors’ will boost mobile sales

LG’s fourth quarter earnings report isn’t great — the company recorded a loss of 80.7 billion won ($72.6 million) — and once again, it was largely due to poor smartphone sales.

LG’s mobile division recorded declining revenue and sales in the fourth quarter, and the only silver lining is the fact that the company managed to cut costs, so it’s losing money a bit slower than it did before. 

Like many of its competitors, LG is betting that new technologies will salvage its money-leaky mobile division. 

“In 2019, LG’s mobile division will push 5G products and smartphones featuring different form factors while focusing on key markets where the LG brand remains strong,” the company said in a press release Thursday. 

We already know a little bit about LG’s plans in the “different form factors” department. The company said it’s experimenting with rollable smartphones, and a recent report said LG is planning to launch a phone with a detachable second screen. 

LG also announced it would be launching a 5G smartphone at the upcoming Mobile World Congress trade show in Barcelona, and a recent teaser (below) hinted at a touch-less UI. 

Whether any of these innovations will actually help LG’s bottom line is open to debate (prior experiments mostly failed), but it looks like the next year will be a very interesting one for the Korean giant. Companies like Samsung, Xiaomi and Huawei have all announced foldable phones as well as 5G phones, and those will all launch in 2019.